HEALTH CARE WATCH

You don't have to go out of state to find wide differences in the cost and quality of hospital care. The variations among Illinois cities highlight differences in the way hospital administrators manage costs and the way physicians practice medicine.

In a recently released study, the Los Angeles office of consulting and accounting firm KPMG Peat Marwick compared 3,700 high-volume acute-care hospitals in the United States from 1992 to 1994. Key areas measured were the cost of a hospital stay and the average length of a hospitalization.

Among Illinois towns and cities, Champaign-Urbana and Rockford had the lowest combination of cost and length of hospital stay relative to national medians. Downstate Kankakee had the highest costs and the longest hospital stays.

Significantly, those differences exist even after adjusting for severity of illnesses and inflation among Illinois communities.

"When you see the numbers, those differences are (due to) a combination of management expertise and physician practice patterns," says Michael S. Hamilton, head of KPMG's health care practice.

In the Midwest, Grand Rapids, Mich., had the lowest hospital costs and shortest hospitalization, according to the KPMG study.